Charge: Obama Systematically Ignores PA Hate-Mongering

Documented by US-Jewish group: Obama gov’t is not interested in problem of Palestinian incitement and denies that PA has anything to do with it.

By Hillel Fendel

First Publish: 5/9/2010, 10:16 AM / Last Update: 5/9/2010, 10:44 AM

palwatch.org

Ever since U.S. President Barack Obama’s famous Cairo speech, and up until these very days, incitement against Israel in and by the Palestinian Authority is being whitewashed by the Obama-Clinton administration. This is the unambiguous conclusion reached by the Director of the Center for Middle East Policy (CMEP) and the President of the Zionist Organization of America.

A list of incidents documented by the ZOA’s Morton Klein and Daniel Mandel of the CMEP includes the following:

1. June 4,2009 – Obama’s Cairo address criticized Holocaust denial and hatred of Jews in the Muslim world, without mentioning the PA or the word incitement.

Klein and Mandel write that Obama was “criticized for ignoring this issue,” and that he and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton later mentioned the word incitement, but gave no indication that the PA was responsible for incitement. In no way was it implied that the PA might face penalties for such incitement.

“On the contrary,” Klein and Mandel write. "When Obama referred to the problem of Palestinian incitement in his speech at Buchenwald on June 5, 2009, he even praised [PA chairman] Abbas for having made some “progress” in dealing with it – implying that Abbas and the PA were part of the solution rather than the problem.”

2. August 2009: No reaction from Obama to a Fatah conference that “reaffirmed Fatah’s refusal to accept Israel’s existence as a Jewish state, glorified terrorists living and dead by name, praised the ‘armed struggle,’ [and in which] Abbas himself declared ‘We maintain the right to launch an armed resistance.’”

Clinton’s response: The conference showed “a broad consensus supporting … negotiations with Israel, and the two-state solution” and that contrary statements by unnamed “individuals” there “did not represent Fatah’s official positions.” The ZOA/CMEP report noted that in the past, as a US Senator from New York, Clinton had been outspoken about the need to end PA incitement.

3. January 2010: The Obama administration was silent when leading PA figures, including Abbas and prime minister Salam Fayyad, publicly praised and lauded three Fatah terrorists killed by Israel who had murdered an Israeli civilian, Rabbi Meir Chai.

4. January 2010: No response from Obama or Clinton when PA TV broadcast a mosque sermon in which Jews were declared “the enemies of Allah and of His Messenger … Enemies of humanity in general” and Muslims were exhorted to murder them with the words “The Prophet says: ‘You shall fight the Jews and kill Them.”

5. March 2010: Obama and company took unprecedented umbrage at an Israeli announcement of progress towards building Jewish homes in Ramat Shlomo, Jerusalem, during Vice-President Biden’s visit – but failed to respond when a public square in Ramallah was named, the same week, after the terrorist who had led the worst terror attack against Israel in history.

6. Ultimately, when Secretary Clinton criticized the square-naming, “it was only to whitewash and protect Abbas, Fayyad and the PA by incorrectly suggesting that it was ‘a Hamas-controlled municipality’ that had initiated the event. Adding insult to injury, Clinton actually praised Abbas and Fayyad for their strengthening of ‘law and order.’”

7. “At the time of these remarks,” the report notes, “the PA was actively instigating violence in and around Jerusalem. Here, too, Clinton avoided any mention of the PA in referring to the disorders, speaking only of unidentified ‘instigators.’”

“The conclusion is inevitable,” the report sums up. “The Obama Administration is not interested in Palestinian incitement and sees it as its brief to protect the PA from exposure as sponsors of violence and purveyors of hate.”